


Opening Salvo

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Wednesday One-Shots [18]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Healing, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry, consumed by his memories after the war, finds himself guided by Luna to Severus and Draco, who have lived in seclusion since the end of the Death Eater trials. Now Harry is face-to-face with old enemies he testified for and a place of peace where he has no choice but to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another one of my Wednesday one-shots, written for an anonymous prompt that asked for: Harry living in the Muggle world, struggling with PTSD, and being brought by Luna to Draco and Severus, who owe her and Harry debts; angst with a happy ending. This will probably have three parts.

There was a soft white glow in front of him, so unexpected that Harry turned his head back and forth several times, squinting, before he managed to identify it.   
  
“Luna?”  
  
As if speaking her name had called her back into form, suddenly he could see her clearly. Luna stood in his bedroom in a sparkling white set of robes, which flowed around her like the fronds of a plant. Harry smiled at her.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he added, sitting up in the bed. He spent a lot of hours lying around, thinking, and sometimes so consumed with emotion that it was as if he was back in the memories he was trying to deal with. Really _there_ in the cupboard, or _there_ in the Chamber of Secrets, or _there_ in front of Voldemort as he died.  
  
But right now, he had an obligation to be here, with Luna, who was politely waiting for him. Harry put his feet on the floor to remind himself of the reality other people inhabited, and nodded. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“You already asked me that, Harry,” Luna murmured, drifting towards him. She reached out with a hand as soft as spidersilk and caressed his cheek.  
  
“Did I?” Harry shook his head with dismay. “Sorry.” He turned his head and spent a moment smelling her scent. His memories didn’t include a lot of strong scents, except blood. It was refreshing to smell ordinary salt and skin.  
  
“You don’t have to be sorry for me,” said Luna. She frowned, and Harry stared at her. He couldn’t remember her doing that before. “The nargles are the ones who should apologize to you, confusing you like this. How _dare_ they.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luna,” Harry said, and touched a hand to his hair. He grimaced a little when he felt how greasy it was, but then shook his head and dropped his hand into his lap. He could barely handle the ordinary chores of keeping himself alive. He couldn’t cast the Cleaning Charms when he hadn’t known Luna was coming.  
  
“The nargles are making you dream of bad things all the time,” said Luna severely, and put her hands on her hips. “They’re the younger cousins of Dementors. They were always jealous that Dementors got to feed on happiness, because they can’t. But they can make you feel bad.” She cast a disapproving glance around at Harry’s flat, and Harry looked with her, wincing as he saw the piled boxes in the corners, still full of clothes and Quidditch gear, still half-packed.  
  
“How long have you been feeling this bad, Harry?” Luna asked, turning back to him. Her voice was gentle, but Harry still hesitated before the supreme effort of thinking of the date. Luna made her voice coaxing. “I can’t tell how bad the nargles are unless I know when it started.”  
  
“Right after the war,” Harry murmured. He lay back in the bed. He would probably return to another memory in a minute, and it was best—he’d learned from hard experience—not to be sitting up when he did that. “I started thinking about what I was going to do, and I realized I didn’t want to do anything.”  
  
“ _That_ might be the Wrackspurts,” said Luna thoughtfully. “What about Ron and Hermione?”  
  
“In Australia searching for Hermione’s parents.” Harry winced and shut his eyes. The last owl he’d had from Hermione had said that apparently her Memory Charm had implanted a few more memories than she’d meant to give her parents; they thought someone was hunting for them and were trying to hide. No wonder she and Ron kept stumbling on clues and then losing the trail.  
  
“I’ve mislaid my father in many places, but I don’t think I’ve ever mislaid him in Australia.”  
  
Harry only shook his head, and said nothing. Luna was quiet, watching him. Harry thought she might vanish as suddenly as she’d arrived.  
  
But then she said, “Would friends help you drive the nargles and Wrackspurts away?”  
  
Harry swallowed. “I don’t think so, Luna. The last time I went to the Burrow was pretty disastrous.”  
  
He didn’t _mean_ it to be. But it was like his tongue ran away from him, and he couldn’t talk about anything but Fred. And then, when he was quiet, he saw the way Molly stared with brimming eyes at the empty place she’d set at the table, and he’d tried to comfort her.  
  
Harry winced away from _that_ memory, too, and looked at Luna. She was standing on one foot now, reciting a quick rhyme under her breath.  
  
“Just to make sure the nargles don’t follow us where I’m going to take you,” she said, and put the foot down, and reached for Harry’s hand. “Can you unpack some clothes to take with you?”  
  
“I—what? Luna, I’m not going anywhere.” Harry tried to pull free. He thought it would be easy, but maybe he was weaker than he knew. He found himself blinking in shock at the slender fingers that still clasped his wrist.  
  
“Yes, you’re right,” Luna said. “It would be better to find clothes fit you there. I think you’re about Draco’s size.”  
  
“ _Draco_?” Harry shook his head. Some of his most intense memories were of Malfoy, sobbing in the bathroom or standing motionless as death in the courtroom where the Wizengamot was deciding his fate or staring up hopelessly through the Fiendfyre. “I’m not going to visit Malfoy.”  
  
“I didn’t say it would be a visit.” Luna stepped back and put a hand on his shoulder as if she was measuring him. “Well. Perhaps Professor Snape’s clothes would be better. You’ve lost weight, and he’s thin. But I think Draco’s would be better for size.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. “I know they live somewhere together. I’m not visiting them.”  
  
“No, you aren’t,” Luna agreed.  
  
Harry opened his eyes and looked at her again. She wasn’t acting very different from the way she always had, but at the same time, he wondered if this was another dream or hallucination. It didn’t seem to have any point. “Then I’m staying here. You can stay with me for a little while, Luna. I mean, you can visit. I can make some tea.” He looked around the flat. He knew he had some Muggle tea somewhere.  
  
And if he searched hard enough, he might even find his wand.  
  
“No,” said Luna patiently. “You won’t be visiting them. I’m taking you to live with them. They have a lot of nice friends around them who chase nargles away.”  
  
Harry recoiled before he could even think about how he’d react. The last thing he needed was a bunch of people who would look at him with pity in their eyes and see the deranged Boy-Who-Lived, maybe sell the stories to reporters. “I want to stay here, Luna,” he said.  
  
“But that’s the nargles talking,” said Luna. She looked around for a minute, as if searching for something, then solemnly reached into her pocket and took out a necklace of small shells strung on a piece of twine. She offered it to Harry. “I should have had you put it on right away, but I didn’t know they were this bad.”  
  
Harry shook his head, not touching the necklace. “I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
She smiled at him, took his arm, and turned them. Harry didn’t stand up from the bed, but he still found himself Side-Along Apparating. Suddenly he was sitting on a rock that was lower than the bed, low enough that he smacked his arse and gave a painted shout.  
  
“What did you bring us this time, Luna? Another sick Crup puppy we have to stay up all night with?”  
  
Harry turned his head. They were sitting outdoors—well, he’d already realized that, given the rock under his arse and all—in a small green valley between two extremely high hills. A pen of goats stood a short distance away, with a few taller creatures in it that looked like they had wounded legs. And in front of Harry stood Malfoy, with a tiny basket over his arm and, sure enough, a Crup puppy at his heels.  
  
“Oh, no!” said Luna, beaming. “Something much more—”  
  
“Troublesome,” Malfoy sighed out, eyes never leaving Harry’s. “Was it the nargles or the Wrackspurts?”  
  
*  
  
Inwardly, Draco knew he should be glad Luna hadn’t brought them another unicorn to nurse. They already had three, and even with Severus’s potions, it could take months to heal the inner damage to their spirits as well as the outer damage to their bodies.  
  
That didn’t mean Draco was pleased to see Potter.  
  
Of course, he was mostly _surprised_ to see Potter. No one had since the end of the war, from what he could remember of the stories in the papers. Someone would say they’d seen him, and that would set off a frenzy of hunting through Muggle London, and later it would turn out that person had been drunk or mistaken. And then Draco and Severus had moved into their valley, and covered it with some of the strongest protection spells they knew, and even reports like that had ceased.  
  
Luna was standing with her frown trained on Draco. Draco sighed. He and Severus owed Luna for wandering into their home one day and announcing that she’d found a valley occupied by magical creatures that would be perfect as a home for them. If nothing else, Draco would listen to her _reasoning_ for bringing Potter.  
  
He just didn’t expect to be convinced of it.  
  
“It was the nargles,” Luna said, in the low voice she used whenever she talked about that particular set of nonexistent creations. “Infecting poor Harry’s head and making him think the _worst_ thoughts.”  
  
Potter had turned enough to look at Draco with a blank expression on his face, like the one Severus had sometimes worn right after his trial. Draco resisted the urge to shrug. So it was memories of the war. Everyone got them.  
  
 _Potter has more right than most._  
  
“I wanted to bring him to the place with the least nargles I could think of,” Luna finished firmly. “And I know that you and Professor Snape like memories, too. So here we are.” She beamed at William, the Crup she’d brought them a month ago, and the unicorns and goats in the pen, and Potter, and Draco.  
  
Draco sighed and set his basket down. “We can’t do much for humans, Luna. You know that.” Since it was through her persistence—or rather, her blithe assumption that they would do it when she brought them injured magical creatures—that they’d become creature healers, he’d thought she would remember that, one fixed point in the floating sea of her delusions.  
  
Luna chuckled and reached out to pat him on the arm. “I do remember that, Draco! But wizards are a kind of magical creature. And Harry is less human than most.”  
  
Draco darted a quick glance at Potter, to see how he liked being spoken of like that. Potter only blinked slowly at him.  
  
 _Stupefied with depression? Maybe._ And that made Draco even _less_ sanguine about healing him.  
  
“I don’t know how Severus will react to having him here,” he said, turning again to face Luna. “And you know he’s the one who has to make the final decision.”  
  
Potter made a little move with one hand, but said nothing. Draco wondered if Severus’s name had a chance of reaching him, even now.  
  
“I don’t want you to do anything extraordinary, Draco.” Luna smiled chidingly at him and went over to pet one of the goats in the pen. The large black-and-white one, Sniffing, Draco saw, when she moved a little to let the goat nuzzle closer. “Only heal Harry and make him happy to live again and get him back on his feet.”  
  
“Right,” Draco said a second later, when he’d had a chance to feel as if he’d stopped reeling. “Nothing extraordinary.”  
  
Luna smiled at him. “It’s always nice when my friends agree with me.”  
  
“Why here?”  
  
That was Potter’s voice, dull and uninterested. Draco shook his head a little. So this had all been Luna’s idea, with Potter having no input? They were even _less_ likely to heal him than they had been.  
  
“Because you’ll recover best here, dear Harry,” Luna said, and for once her eyes were sharp instead of distracted when Draco looked at her. “With people to challenge you and for you to struggle against, and who will _wake you up_.”  
  
Draco looked at Potter, wondering if those words had some special significance to him, but all Potter did was blink and shake his head. “I don’t need to wake up, Luna. I’m not dreaming. I don’t have nightmares.”  
  
Draco snorted a little. “Even I can hear that something is wrong, Potter. You sound like you’ve had too much to drink.”  
  
“No, _you_ sound that way,” Potter muttered childishly.  
  
Before Draco could answer, footsteps sounded up the pebbly hillside. Draco sighed and turned around. “You should be resting, Severus.” The day after a ritual with one of the unicorns to take willingly given blood was always best spent in bed.  
  
But Severus, although he was walking with the aid of a cane and the scar lines on his throat from the snakebite seemed especially vivid today, hadn’t lost any of the alertness in his eyes. He turned his head back and forth from Potter to Draco, and said nothing. Draco sighed and started to explain.  
  
Luna did before he could. “It’s like Harry is a wounded unicorn without a horn and hooves,” she said earnestly. “And without fur. And with a horrible burden in his heart.” She paused. “That’s it.”  
  
Potter pushed himself off the stone and stood up with a horrible dragging slowness to his movements. Draco savagely bit his lip. They could do nothing for a Potter who didn’t _want_ to recover, and frankly that was what this looked like to him.  
  
But all Potter did was bob one of those heavy, half-drunken nods at Severus and say, “Professor Snape, sir. You survived even after the trials.”  
  
Severus paused. Draco could see his fingers working on the top of the cane. “What kind of healing do you need, Mr. Potter?”  
  
“I don’t think I need _any_. I mean, I know it’s not healthy, but other people got over it after the war. I will, too.” Potter folded his arms and glared at them all.  
  
“He needs healing for his memories,” said Luna. “They’re overtaking him. Hunting him down. I know you caged some of your memories, Professor Snape. Would you show him how to do the same thing?”  
  
“That would involve Legilimency,” said Severus at once. Now he was standing straight and no longer leaning as much on his cane, but his eyes, fastened on Potter, were still brilliant with dislike. Well, Draco could hardly blame him. “An art in which Mr. Potter and I have _equally_ bad experiences.”  
  
Potter breathed out slowly through his mouth. Then he said, “I don’t care if you want to poke inside my head. I just don’t think it’ll do anything.”  
  
“And what about you peering inside _mine_ , Mr. Potter?” Severus’s voice made William the Crup slink behind Draco’s legs.  
  
“Since you’re not trying to teach me Occlumency and I don’t know Legilimency, I wouldn’t be doing that,” was all Potter said, simply, before he turned and looked at Draco. “You wouldn’t mind me staying here?”  
  
“I thought you didn’t need to.” Draco shifted the basket from one arm to the other, and saw the goats’ eyes focus on it. He almost snorted. _Of course._ They hadn’t been fed yet, and most be wondering where in the world their food had gone.  
  
“Luna wants me to. And I don’t have anything tying me to the flat.”  
  
“Your friends?”  
  
“In Australia still looking for Hermione’s parents.”  
  
There was a story there, but not one Draco cared to pursue. He only nodded and said, “Well, we owe Luna a debt for finding us this place, and you life-debts. I can put you up. And I can practice Legilimency on you if Severus has objections.”  
  
“Good,” Potter said vaguely, and sat down on his stone again. Draco glanced at Severus  
  
Severus was looking at Luna. Luna had gone back to petting Sniffing. Severus said softly, “And you think this is for the best, Miss Lovegood?”  
  
Luna beamed at him. “For _everyone_.”   
  
Draco turned back to his partner. Then it was just up to whether Severus could tolerate Potter’s presence in the house.  
  
Severus examined Potter in a way Draco had come to recognize. It said that this particular magical creature would be a challenge to heal, and that was a good thing. Severus’s constantly critical, thinking mind would get bored with no challenges.  
  
Finally, Severus looked up and nodded.   
  
“Good, then,” said Luna, and Apparated out of their valley, the only person other than them who could. Potter continued to sit droopily on his rock. Draco exchanged a glance with Severus over his head.  
  
 _An unpromising beginning._  
  
Then again, some of their other healings had had unpromising beginnings, Draco told himself as he finally moved to feed the goats. And there was the possibility that they would get some profit out of it, the way they did selling magical hair and horns and the like with permission from the creatures they healed.  
  
Then Draco looked again at the motionless Potter on his rock, and had to wince.  
  
 _Maybe_ some profit. Maybe.   
  



	2. Chapter 2

_An attack of memories,_ Severus wrote as he settled against the heavy dark shelves he kept most of his Potions ingredients on and observed Potter. Potter had sat on a chair for the past half-hour and stared at Severus’s brewing cauldrons without words or movements. Well, except for a twitch now and then.  
  
 _So Lovegood claims. It may be that he simply suffers from lack of attention and not having someone to tend to his every need for acclaim_.  
  
Keeping that in mind, Severus turned back to the cauldron in front of him. This particular Calming Draught required a great deal of minced bay leaves. He would ignore Potter for a time and see what happened.  
  
Nothing was what happened, other than a few times Potter caught his breath or coughed, perhaps from the fumes. Indeed, Severus was able to measure and pour so well that he forgot Potter was in the room. He had crushed several flies with a mortar and pestle and filled another cauldron with water before he remembered.  
  
“Tell me about your memories, Potter,” he instructed, without turning around.  
  
“Why? You were there for the worst of them.”  
  
Severus turned sharply, but the tone hadn’t been insolent. Potter went on staring drearily at the potions. Severus frowned and tipped a spoonful of honey into the cauldron of water, then set it to simmer.  
  
“I want to know what memories make you unable to move out of the house.”  
  
“My relatives starving me. Voldemort dying. Dumbledore dying. Sirius dying. Cedric dying. The moment in the graveyard when Wormtail cut open my arm and took my blood. The end of second year when—”  
  
“I was not there for most of those,” Severus cut in. He hadn’t meant to provoke such a recital. “Tell me about the end of second year.”  
  
But Potter didn’t speak for an unnervingly long span of time. Severus kept his eyes on the cauldrons again, and tried to forget about it. The moment arrived when he needed to tilt a second spoonful of honey into the potion that had required the first, and he did so.  
  
Finally, Potter began in a whisper that Severus had to listen hard for, since it almost disappeared into the rustling of liquids in the cauldrons and the soft plop of bubbles. Luckily, listening to Potions for most of his life had given him extraordinary hearing.  
  
“We knew Ginny was in the Chamber of Secrets. I thought I would be going in with Ron and Professor Lockhart—”  
  
Severus snorted. He had known Lockhart was a fraud long before anyone else.  
  
 _Not that Albus listened to me. He should have listened._  
  
“Yes, I know,” Potter said, surprisingly on point, as if he were answering Severus’s thoughts. Severus twisted around and stared. Potter shrugged and went on. “But we didn’t know that then. Then Lockhart got _Obliviated_ because he tried to use Ron’s broken wand on us, and he and Ron got trapped on the other side of the rockfall. I had to go on alone.”  
  
He stopped. Severus stirred uneasily. He had thought he would listen to some maudlin litany of woe, and he supposed it could still sound like that if you listened in the right way. But he was listening in the correct way.  
  
Potter’s flat, emotionless words were disturbing.  
  
Severus cleared his throat. “Go on.”  
  
“And then I went into the Chamber. I found Ginny and the diary draining her. I still trusted Tom Riddle, the boy in the diary, and I tried to get him to help me. But then he revealed that he was the Heir of Slytherin, and he’d been possessing Ginny and getting her to command the basilisk. He summoned it.”  
  
Again Potter stopped. Severus looked at him and saw him staring into space, his eyes fixed.  
  
“Potter?” Severus said sharply, and stepped towards him. He wafted a bit of the smoke from the most foul-smelling cauldron towards him with a wordless charm.   
  
Potter didn’t move.  
  
Severus winced. _These would be the “memory-trances” he talked about, then. And that Lovegood wants us to heal him from._  
  
Despite his reluctance and memories of how badly this had gone last time plaguing him, Severus saw no choice. He had no idea how long it would take Potter to recover from one of these trances, and no idea what his mood would be like when he did, or if he would be up to discussing the Chamber of Secrets. Severus stepped up to him, braced his hip against the table, ignored the burning of the scars on his throat, and whispered, “ _Legilimens_.”  
  
He disappeared into the memory of a snake charging at him.  
  
*  
  
It was so violently _real_.  
  
Harry knew in some part of himself, distant and unimportant, that he couldn’t be here, twelve years old, kneeling on the floor of the Chamber with the basilisk looming above him. He’d already been here once, and he was _older_ than twelve. He’d survived and he’d used the Sword of Gryffindor and phoenix tears to do it.  
  
But he was there anyway, and the great mouth was stabbing down, and then one of the basilisk’s fangs went through his arm.  
  
The pain was more real than last time. It unfolded through his arm like a great poisonous flower, and Harry felt each and every one of the thorns stabbing him. He screamed, but the scream was a weak little sound, and he slumped forwards onto the floor of the Chamber. Blood pooled around him, shooting out from his arm, so much blood that his head spun from the loss.  
  
“It is not real, Potter.”  
  
The words were like a rock to lean on. Harry turned his head and found Snape standing beside him. But he didn’t look right. He didn’t look as young as he should. He looked older and tired, and he had scars on his neck that made it look as though a basilisk had bitten _him_.  
  
The thought was like someone had torn a breach through the memory, and light and air rushed at Harry through the gap. He gave a loud sob and reached out to clutch at Snape’s robe, even though it was _Snape_.  
  
Suddenly he could feel something else beneath him, a chair that he was sitting on or something. He could smell other things than blood and death—smoke, fumes maybe? And he could hear the hissing of the cauldrons louder than the hissing of the basilisk.  
  
“Hold on to me.”  
  
Unexpected words to come from Snape, again. But Harry closed his eyes and did so. He had been outside this memory, he knew that, but this was the first time he had ever felt as though something actually existed outside the small part of him insisting on the truth.  
  
It was hard to believe in that mental “truth” when he was seeing blood on the floor, feeling the pain, and reliving every instant of a memory, even if the rest of him said it was long past.  
  
*  
  
Severus hooked one arm around the memory-projection of Potter. It felt far more solid than such a projection should.  
  
Of course, the basilisk turning around in front of them and hissing like a poisonous potion was also more solid than he would have thought. As solid as reality, he thought. Not composed of fleeting impressions and colored smoke the way he was used to viewing memories as a Legilimens. The only time Severus had seen anything resembling these pictures was when he had attacked the mind of an Occlumens with unusual training. In the moments before Severus had been able to extract himself and free, the Occlumens had flung images like this at him, images that could have trapped him in a “reality” entirely of his victim’s making if he hadn’t been careful.  
  
But Potter had no such Occlumency training, and should _not_ have needed it even if he had, now that the Dark Lord was dead. Severus had no idea what could have caused these kinds of images to pop up.  
  
“Come with me, Potter,” he said steadily, and began to fall back, across the floor of what certainly looked like it could be the Chamber of Secrets. Potter followed him, kneeling at first, then crouching, and then getting to his feet as the image of the basilisk thrashed behind the barrier Severus’s presence had constructed.  
  
That was another odd thing. Severus had every reason to know that Potter didn’t associate his presence with safety. So why he had reacted now as if he did? Memories were not supposed to encourage someone to go against their deepest emotional inclinations, no matter how bad they were.  
  
 _Of course, Potter might not hate you as much as you always assumed._  
  
Severus dismissed the notion, eyes locked on the basilisk. For now, he would worry about getting them out of here.  
  
Potter abruptly leaped into the air. Severus tried to clutch at him, and stumbled a little. That meant, though, that the basilisk’s tail missed them both as it swept in behind them, trying to scythe them from their feet.  
  
 _And memories definitely aren’t supposed to fight back,_ Severus thought grimly, and then he gave up on being delicate with Potter’s mind and simply rammed them both straight out of there. Potter had welcomed Severus into his memories. That made the likelihood that he would do permanent damage to him small.  
  
And at the moment, Severus was more worried about the permanent damage Potter’s own _mind_ might do.  
  
*  
  
Draco took one look at Severus’s face and stopped petting William, who had curled up at his side in one of his needy moods. William lifted his head and whimpered. Then _he_ saw Severus and leaped to his feet, a growl quivering through his little doggy body.  
  
“What is it?” Draco asked quietly, reaching for the small basket that always accompanied him unless he was actually feeding the animals. If Luna had brought them another badly injured creature, Draco would need the contents.  
  
“It’s Potter.”  
  
Draco stared, and then managed to wrench himself into the mental world he needed to acknowledge that Severus could look concerned like that over _Potter_. He still nodded and picked up the basket. It was probably going to be useful anyway. “What happened?”  
  
“He went into a memory-trance,” said Severus briskly, opening the door of his lab. “I tried to use Legilimency to get him out of it, and the memory came to life and attacked us.”  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
Severus glanced back. “I know.”  
  
Draco ducked his head, and only partially to ponder such a strange occurrence. He really wanted to hide his quivering lips from Severus. There was no trace of disdain or boredom in Severus’s expression now. His voice was full of the intent pleasure of a hunt, which Draco only heard most of the time when Severus was discussing an experimental potion that would make a major difference in whatever field it was for.  
  
 _Make Potter into a challenge. That’s the way to get him to treat him. Luna was right_.  
  
Potter lay on the floor against the wall when Draco came into the room. He turned his head to acknowledge them, but that was all. William wriggled briskly past before Draco could get to Potter—Draco hadn’t known the Crup was following them—and went straight to Potter, licking his face in a no-nonsense manner.  
  
Potter lifted his head and then his hand, and gently pushed William away. He looked at Draco’s basket instead of Draco himself.  
  
“What’s that?” he murmured, gesturing at the little pots and pastes inside.  
  
“Your salvation,” said Draco, and set the basket down. He had to hide his twitching lips again as he watched Potter dodge William’s tongue. William persisted in the quiet way Draco had sometimes seen the Crup mothers Luna brought them clean their puppies. “Hold still and open your mouth.”  
  
“Is it going to be filled with saliva if I do?” Potter asked, glancing warily at William.  
  
“I’ll hold the ferocious monster back,” said Severus solemnly, and caught hold of William’s collar. William sat down, but kept his gaze on Potter, as much to say that he needed to take his medicine or it would be a tongue-bath for him.  
  
“Now,” said Draco, and took out the nearest of the little pots. It was filled with an orange paste that he used to calm the worst of the wounded unicorns down. He’d let his hand go to it instinctively, but he thought the guess was right. “Are you going to swallow this on your own? Or rather, let me coat your tongue with it?” he added, as Potter opened his mouth.  
  
Potter grimaced, but stuck his tongue out. Draco carefully smeared the paste along the middle, then drew back and said, “Pull it back into your mouth and swish it around as hard as you can. That’ll mean that the paste gets on your teeth, and that’s the best you can hope for.”  
  
“Hard to hope for things now,” Potter muttered, but he did as Draco told him. Draco watched critically. It took longer for the telltale signs of relaxation to spread through Potter’s body than it did a unicorn’s, but in the end he turned and slumped against the wall, his eyes fluttering shut.  
  
“Now,” Draco said to Severus, and Severus nodded and began to cast the diagnostic spells that they usually used on unicorns, who were more easily spirit-wounded than any of the other beasts they took care of. It was surprisingly easy to think of Potter as an awkward unicorn who just happened to have hands instead of hooves and no horn, Draco realized. He cast his own diagnostic spells for the physical wounds, and shook his head when he was done. Potter was suffering intense exhaustion, both magical and physical.  
  
 _If all he’s been doing is lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling—which is what Luna described—then where the hell did that come from?_  
  
“Draco!”  
  
Severus’s sharp voice made him turn, already poised to battle whatever threat had arisen from the patient’s body. Some of the cleverer unicorn hunters would leave spells behind that would cling to fur or hooves, degrading their prey’s ability to escape even if they managed to get themselves out of the trap.  
  
But this was nothing like any spell Draco had seen before. A violently surging green light—the color of the Killing Curse, in fact—had encircled Potter’s body. It was striking and lunging like a snake, one sharp tip on the end open like a snake’s mouth.  
  
It was no wonder Severus had frozen. Draco shooed him back and stepped in front of him, snapping his wand in the charm that stopped most of these hunting spells dead in their tracks.  
  
It didn’t stop this one. On the other hand, Draco felt nothing when the sharp end tried to brush him. It simply retired into Potter’s body and watched with one vigilant eye. The other end of it was sunken into Potter’s head.  
  
Into his scar.  
  
“I think it’s probably some remnant of the Horcrux,” Draco whispered in awe. He felt Severus tense behind him, and was sorry for it, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the spell. “A curse that the Dark Lord left behind, or something. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s hard to be sure.”  
  
“I would not have expected such a curse,” said Severus at once, frowning. “During his last moments of life, the Dark Lord was entirely occupied in…defending himself. He would not have had the time.”  
  
Draco nodded. “And it feels more like a spiritual wound to me, anyway.” Years of treating unicorns, chimeras, and some of the other rarer and more delicate magical creatures had left him sensitive to the vibrations of magic that came from a wound as opposed to a curse. Now that he was concentrating and not distracted by how unusual the snake _appeared_ , he could feel those vibrations.  
  
“Yet the Horcrux is gone,” Severus said.   
  
Draco found his hand and squeezed it without looking away from Potter. He knew the reason those words were an article of faith for Severus, and he didn’t intend to diminish his comfort. “It is,” he agreed. “But I have to wonder what sort of void it would leave behind in a living host. Or what sort of injury you’d get tearing it loose.”  
  
Severus shifted behind him and breathed in deeply. Draco hid his smile again. That was the sound of Severus Snape, Researcher, coming to the fore, as opposed to Severus Snape, Former Death Eater.  
  
“Yes, it would be an unexpected situation,” Severus murmured. “Of course, Potter’s general apathy is more consistent with simple mental trauma from the war.”  
  
Draco nodded at the snake. “But this is complicating it. And probably preventing him from healing, and pulling him more firmly into those memories than should be the case for anyone simply experiencing aftereffects from the war.”  
  
After the moment, Severus raised a hand in reluctant agreement. Draco nodded and cast one of the spells that spread a light glaze of healing over the spiritual wounds in a unicorn, subduing their crazed pain enough that Draco could work with them.  
  
The snake struggled against it for a moment, as if it would slip through the gleaming silver loops of the spell, but then it vanished back into Potter’s body. Draco sighed and stood up. “I’ll move him to a bed,” he said. “And size some clothes for him. He probably should have rested this morning, instead of immediately joining you in the lab. Do you want to come with me?”  
  
Severus, his gaze locked longingly on Potter, nonetheless shook his head. “I’ve left some sensitive potions without supervision long enough,” he added, and turned towards the lab.  
  
Draco gently floated Potter into the air, never looking away from him himself. Potter had borne those wounds by himself, without his friends, and either surfacing from such memories in his own time or resisting them through his own strength?  
  
 _It’s remarkable that he’s lasted this long._  
  
*  
  
Harry started awake. He was in a bed he didn’t recognize, a bed with silver sheets and green pillows but in a room with a bland color scheme. There was a single table by the bed, a desk across the room with a chair, and a large window. In the chair sat Malfoy, who turned swiftly to face him.  
  
“What happened to Snape?” Harry asked quietly. “The last thing I remember is him trying to help me escape the basilisk.”  
  
Malfoy smiled a little, as if he approved of Harry’s concern for Snape. _Well, seeing that they’re lovers, he probably does,_ Harry thought. “He’s fine. He got you out of your memories, but then a magic manifested, like a green snake darting around you, that I think is a remnant of void left by the Horcrux. And your memories are too strong. It’s no wonder you’ve been trapped in them. The Horcrux remains probably strengthen them.”  
  
“You mean it’s _real_?”  
  
“What’s real?”  
  
Harry had to close his eyes and swallow. But at least, at last, he could tell someone about this, the thing he hadn’t wanted to voice because it sounded like he was going insane, and enough people thought him mad already.  
  
“There’s a green snake I see sometimes. The color of the Killing Curse. It crawls through my dreams and laughs at me. Tells me I’ll never be free. Tells me I should never have survived the war, or Voldemort. Tells me…”  
  
He trailed off. Not even to an interested and believing audience could he tell some of the other things the snake had said.  
  
“That would be it,” said Malfoy, his voice mountain-steady. A second later, Harry started because he felt a hand on his brow. Malfoy touched his scar, even after Harry opened his eyes to stare, and then nodded and pulled his hand back.   
  
“Rest here, Potter. Severus and I are going to discuss the best way to rid you of these remnants.” He rose, but didn’t walk out of the room, instead standing with his back to Harry. Harry blinked and waited.  
  
“And we’re going to _succeed_ ,” said Malfoy, turning just enough that Harry could make out one fanatically determined grey eye. “I don’t care how long it takes us. We _will_.”  
  
Harry nodded back, with a dry throat. Malfoy walked out, and Harry lay back in what felt like a slow-motion collapse.  
  
The thought that someone else believed him about the green snake, that he might be free of the memories and nightmares that had plagued him since the war…  
  
And even right now, as sleep tugged on him again and he closed his eyes, he could feel how much clearer his head was. As though someone had reached in and forcibly removed some of the clinging strands that were overgrowing his brain.  
  
 _Thank you, Luna._  
  



	3. Chapter 3

"I'm not hungry."  
  
"I want you to try to eat anyway," said Malfoy, putting a piled plate in front of Harry. He serenely ignored the way Harry stared at him. Either Harry had lost the power to intimidate or Malfoy had changed enough since the war not to mind him. "Luna said you usually forget to eat."  
  
"I remember eating something," Harry muttered. He poked the omelette on the plate. It was a perfectly good omelette, as far as he could tell from looking, but looking was all he intended to do. "Half the time that's more real than the food I swallow when I wake up."  
  
He didn't think he'd said anything remarkable, but he looked up in time to see Malfoy's eyes stretched wide. "What?" Harry demanded, and moved his fork around. That might fool Malfoy into thinking he was eating if Harry was lucky. "I told you the truth."  
  
"I'm surprised these memory-trances of yours extend to taste." Malfoy looked as if he wanted to get up and find a parchment right now. "Most of the time, it's sight and sound only."  
  
"Mine are all five senses. Lucky me."  
  
"You might be, Potter. More than you think."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because that means it is probably magic left by the absence of the Horcrux," Malfoy said, and stood to study him. "Not ordinary trauma, but more like the spirit-wounds that Severus and I treat in unicorns. Which means that we have experience in this, and more chance of curing you."  
  
Harry swallowed. He had almost forgotten what it was like to have hope for that, since he was either lying around in despair or suffering through memories that had no hope in them. But he did have to know one thing before he really availed himself of the hope.  
  
"Why are you doing this, Malfoy?" The Crup that was never far from him since yesterday wandered up, and Harry bent over and petted him to hide his expression. "Just because Luna asked you to? It's an awful lot of trouble to put yourself to, simply because she asked."   
  
“That she asked is enough. What we owe her--” Malfoy shook his head a little, as though reading invisible writing on the wall about what they owed Luna and then deciding there was too much to recite it all to Harry. “I’d try to heal a dragon if she asked, and I’d probably still get burned to death. But it would be in a good cause.”  
  
Harry sat there and tried to imagine the Malfoy who was friends with Luna and who did things for good causes. He couldn’t. But then, the man was standing right in front of him, so maybe he didn’t have to imagine him. He just had to get used to him.  
  
“One of the things I wanted to ask,” Malfoy continued, voice low, “was whether you really _want_ to get better.”  
  
Harry stared at him and blinked once, twice. “Of course I do.”  
  
“Then you’ll need to work with us,” said Malfoy. “And I think Snape wants you out in the front garden to help weed it. Come, William.”  
  
The Crup standing at Harry’s side wagged his tail, but still wouldn’t move until Harry moved. Harry peered down at him in confusion. Wasn’t the Crup Snape and Malfoy’s pet? Shouldn’t he be concerned about what _they_ wanted?  
  
William only gave him a simple look, as though warning him not to be so foolish, and trotted beside them both along the corridor that apparently led to the garden.  
  
*  
  
 _Repetitive physical work can put him in a trance of its own. I doubt his memories are provoked by anything so simple as mere physical stimuli. Otherwise, seeing those Mandrakes would have triggered something._  
  
Severus knew Potter would probably think he was in the throes of doing something deathly important as he chopped up and minced weeds on the garden wall--they would serve as the prime ingredient in a potion to douse the earth and prevent that particular kind of weed from coming back--but in reality, Severus had spent more of the morning paying attention to Potter than the plants. This was the sort of potion he’d brewed a hundred times, and by now, his hands mostly moved on their own.  
  
Potter needed his attention far more, enigma that he was.  
  
He weeded with the same ease of long experience that Severus possessed, although Severus had never thought him particularly adept in Herbology. He moved his hands, and stared into the distance with his eyes. His breathing had quieted, enough that Severus became aware of how loud it was most of the time.  
  
Not the panicked breathing of a creature on the verge of flight, but someone who had to breathe as a duty, who had to _remind_ himself to breathe.  
  
Draco was with the goats and unicorns, and would be a good deal longer. Severus lashed the final touch of magic into the potion on the wall, setting it to boil over a small fire burning on air for half an hour, and stepped back long enough to watch a few bubbles before he addressed Potter.  
  
“What is the most powerful memory you experience?”  
  
Potter shook himself slowly back to reality. His breathing picked up its labored pace again, and he turned around and said, “I don’t know. They all feel pretty much the same as each other, really. All equally horrible,” he added, when he saw Severus raise his eyebrows.  
  
“There is no change among the ones most distant in time? In space?”  
  
Potter gave a weak snort. “The one you saw yesterday was one of the older ones. Did it _feel_ like it was lesser because it was older?”  
  
Severus paused. He hadn’t expected Potter to say that, and not because he had a particular theory that older memories would be either worse or weaker. “That was only six years ago,” he said slowly. “You have none older than that.”  
  
Potter paused in turn. “Not about Hogwarts,” he said.  
  
“You have the memory of your parents dying,” Severus said with difficulty. “Or so the were- Lupin told me once.”  
  
“Yes, I do. Well, my mum really. I don’t have any memories of my dad.”  
  
Severus shook his head a little. Yes, it was sad, but he was not going to be drawn into talking about that. He found it hard to talk about Lily even now--not impossible, but it would leave him with a little ache of sorrow in his throat, and he didn’t want that. Instead, he murmured, “And after that? Before the basilisk?”  
  
“The memory of when Quirrell went after the Stone, and I killed him.”  
  
But Potter had tensed, and he only seemed to realize at the last moment that the thing beneath his hand was a flower and not a weed. He stared, blinked, pulled his hand back. He sat there with his head bowed and dangling, and Severus leaned more heavily against the stone wall.  
  
“We cannot help you if you lie to us.”  
  
“It’s not lying in the sense of telling you false things. Just hiding them. Do--do you need to know everything? I thought Luna brought me here so you could help with memories of the war.”  
  
“Miss Lovegood, with the best will in the world,” said Severus slowly, trying to feel his way, “may not have realized that you had more than your memories of the war plaguing you. I doubted it myself until I was in your head last night. Do you want to be helped, Potter?” he added, and he was proud of himself then, because he didn’t snap those words in the way he might have done once. “I cannot tell.”  
  
Potter said nothing, but waited. His head hung. Severus waited, too. Potter was the one who had to make the decision in the end, or their interactions would be worth nothing.  
  
*  
  
 _What frightens you more? Telling Snape and Malfoy about the Dursleys, or being this way for the rest of your life?_  
  
And when he put it like that, Harry did think he knew. Because his fear of telling Snape and Malfoy came from his fear of telling two men who might be dead, or might be changed, and either way, he didn’t think they would make fun of him to his face even if they hadn’t died or changed.  
  
He stood up and turned around to face Snape, who was still watching with motionless eyes. The scars on his throat from Nagini’s bite were brighter than his eyes. Harry cleared his throat a little. “Can I get Malfoy, too? I’d rather tell you both at once.”  
  
“No need to get Malfoy. I’m here.”  
  
Harry started. He hadn’t heard Malfoy walking up behind him, and he hadn’t realized how much time had passed while he was weeding the garden. Now even the angle of the shadows had the power to make him jump.  
  
“All right,” he said, and sat down on the earth. Snape and Malfoy both took seats on the stone wall, near each other in a way that made envy stir in Harry. He’d felt the same kind of envy when he looked at Ron and Hermione, and if he’d never expected to feel it for anyone _other_ than them, well, life did all kinds of unexpected things in his vicinity recently.  
  
“Some of my bad memories come from my Muggle family,” he said. “Living with them, I mean.” _I’m not graceful_. He swallowed and went on. “If you look into my head while I’m going through those memories, you’ll probably see fear and anger and hunger.”  
  
“Hunger?”  
  
Harry wasn’t sure which one of them said it. He was looking away. “Yes,” he said. “They sometimes didn’t give me enough to eat. Or I only ate what my cousin ate when he was on a diet, and that wasn’t much. So…”  
  
“I see.”  
  
That was definitely Snape’s voice, and Harry felt himself relax as he listened. That was, without a doubt, the best way they could have taken it. They weren’t raging. They weren’t derisive. They were simply listening.  
  
“But I think what you said about part of the Horcrux or the void being left behind makes sense,” Harry told Malfoy, who was also sitting silently. “Because these memories haven’t tormented me like this in years. If it’s the magic making them worse…”  
  
“I don’t know exactly what kind of magic would affect memories that old,” said Malfoy, and exchanged a frowning glance with Snape. “But with your permission, I’d like to try a spell on you that might tell me.” He drew his wand.  
  
Harry waited for a second.  
  
“Do you agree?” Malfoy asked, his wand held high and beginning to glow at the end with a blue light that was calming to look at.  
  
“I do,” Harry said, and laughed at himself. “I was just waiting for the panic to come, and it’s--not there.”  
  
Malfoy relaxed from a tension Harry hadn’t even realized he possessed, and smiled at him. “A good beginning,” he agreed, and then he reached out and swirled the wand over Harry’s head, murmuring an incantation that sounded so much like song that Harry couldn’t make out the words. The way Snape had chanted over Malfoy’s chest after Harry cast the _Sectumsempra_ at him, Harry thought drowsily.  
  
He realized suddenly that he didn’t think he’d ever apologized to Malfoy for that. He opened his mouth to do it.  
  
But the spell was there, swirling around him, drawing him deeper, and then he was drifting into the blue, and gone.  
  
*  
  
“Spirit-wounded,” Severus whispered.  
  
Draco didn’t bother to say anything. Severus would know he agreed just by the way Draco shifted and breathed. Besides, he was busy watching the image of Potter change to a transparent one as he collapsed slowly to the grass, making him look like a glass sculpture with nothing inside it.  
  
The nothingness only lasted a minute, though. Then suddenly Potter _did_ light up, and there was a blue glow like Draco’s spell within his outline, although darker, the color of sapphires. And striking all through it was a deep, jagged crack, shaped a little like Potter’s lightning bolt but incredibly darker and bigger.  
  
Draco winced. That spirit-wound went so deep he wouldn’t be surprised if it had carved Potter’s soul in two.  
  
Then again, he had had a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul attached to his. Who knew what that might do to the one left behind?  
  
Draco cast the spell that restored Potter to looking like himself again and studied his snoring figure for a second, shaking his head. “That was a simple spell to send him straight to sleep. Especially since Luna said he’d been doing nothing but sleep for the last few months.”  
  
“Lying on one’s bed and staring up at the ceiling is not sleep.”  
  
Draco gave Severus a faint smile. That was yet another experience they had in common, and yet another one that had made them agree to try to heal Potter instead of merely ignore him.  
  
“The more we can give him natural sleep, the better.”  
  
Draco gestured with his wand at Potter, and then went over and pulled him gently into a more comfortable position. He was going to end up with his neck angled like a fish on a line if he kept sleeping that way. “I wouldn’t call this _natural_.”  
  
“His reaction to the stress of the spell was to go to sleep. I’ll brew a few potions that have components that can encourage rest as well. It will be the best thing to do, to make sure that Potter actually is sleeping instead of having nightmares.”  
  
Draco paused. “You heard him last night, too.”  
  
“I only did not go in to him because William was with him.”  
  
Draco smiled. William had done better at healing some of their other patients than he and Severus could, simply because he lay beside them and slept and provided them with a kind of example of how to rest.  
  
“The nightmares stopped after a time.” Severus studied Potter with eyes that saw things Draco’s never would. Even though Draco was the one more experienced in caring for spirit-wounds, this was one reason he appreciated working with Severus. “I waited to see if he would talk about them this morning. But he did not.”  
  
Draco whistled softly under his breath. “Do you think it’s because of who we used to be? Or has he got used to taking all his troubles as normal and doesn’t think about them at all anymore?” If that was the case, it would be hard to persuade Potter to confront them. Draco knew well from his studies and experience that you had to make any magical creature--wizards included--acknowledge a wound, not simply lick around it.  
  
“Both, I think.” Severus crouched beside Potter and frowned at him. “I can hardly believe that he did not go to someone else before it became this bad, and yet…”  
  
“His best friends are in Australia. Who else would he go to?”  
  
“Minerva?”  
  
It always took Draco a moment, still, to work his head around what Severus was talking about and realize he meant Professor McGonagall. “Would he? They never struck me as that close.”  
  
“The rest of the Weasleys?”  
  
“With his best friend out of the country? And the Weasleys dealing with their own losses from the war?” Draco had read in the _Prophet_ , before they moved here and he stopped reading it at all, that the surviving Weasley twin had become morose and sullen, almost catatonic, and his father had taken a temporary leave of absence from the Ministry to help care for him. “I wonder.”  
  
Severus opened his mouth as if to suggest someone else, and stopped. Draco nodded at him.  
  
“It’s surprisingly hard to think of any other friends Potter made. There are people who might have helped him, but most of those he wouldn’t ask, and most of the ones who would push themselves on him are just the sort to publish his secrets or glory in being close to the Great Harry Potter without actually doing anything to help. Luna was right to bring him here.”  
  
Severus nodded, and then waved his wand and floated Potter off the dirt. “Let’s get him inside and into a real bed. I have the feeling that he has too often slept on the floor or somewhere else that does not resemble one.”  
  
Draco hid a smile as he followed. Severus might claim that he didn’t know what tenderness was, but he always managed to find a way to express it.  
  
“I see you grinning back there, Draco,” Severus said, without turning.  
  
 _Not see it, but feel it. Which is much the same thing_. But Draco didn’t intend to stop grinning, and Severus was too busy floating Potter along and gently pushing aside a fussing William to scold him again.


	4. Chapter 4

“I don’t know how successful we would be at healing the wound in your soul itself. That is soul-magic, and I have no desire to touch it. But we can help you deal with the symptoms, and that, combined with rest and work on your own soul, may gradually close the spirit-wound.”  
  
“It’s the same program I recommend to my unicorns, really,” Malfoy added to Snape’s words, sprawling backwards in his chair at the breakfast table and looking at Harry with that interest that was so foreign. “Constant rest, a few confrontations now and then with pain or fear—usually when I’m making sure their wounds are clean and they can stand up someone moving suddenly near them without bolting. Of course, you don’t have a cracked horn or a broken leg to wound your spirit, but the principle is the same.”  
  
Harry let his hand stray along William’s back, and didn’t answer. He didn’t really know what he was _supposed_ to answer. On the one hand, he believed Malfoy and Snape. And he didn’t think they would turn against him. And he admired them for their _willingness_ to help him.   
  
But he also didn’t think he could do what they were suggesting. He finally opened his mouth and whispered, “I have no idea what it would mean to cooperate with you. I’m not a unicorn. I’m not that innocent.”  
  
“You also are not as in need of guilt and lashes as you think you are.” Snape’s voice, cool and bracing, like one of the winds blowing around Hogwarts in winter. “With your permission, I will take you into your memories and show you a path out of them.”  
  
“I—that would work?”  
  
“It will take more trust than you and I currently have between us. Because we have had bad memories connected to Legilimency, we will need to work past those, until you can welcome my presence in your head. But then, yes, I think I can heal your spirit-wound this way, by showing you other ways that matters might fall out.”  
  
“I never…” Harry was silent for a second. Only the warm back of the Crup under his hand felt real. And then the way William’s tongue swept down his cheek while he stood on his hind legs and reared up, barking encouragingly.  
  
“I know it will take time,” said Snape. “And I think you and Draco ought to work on building that trust before you and I try.”  
  
Harry blinked. “But if we’re supposed to build trust, then how is it going to work if it’s between Malfoy and me?”  
  
“The same way I can show the unicorns how to trust, and they listen to me, and then they can trust other people when we release them into sanctuaries those people guard,” said Malfoy. He put his cup of some steaming drink that didn’t smell like tea down and moved to sit in front of Harry. “Luna taught me a few tricks, and I learned others on my own. Look into my eyes.”  
  
Harry did, frowning. He couldn’t help remembering that he’d had bad memories associated with Malfoy, too, although it was true that none of them were associated with Legilimency.  
  
“None of that,” Malfoy scolded him, reaching out and balancing his hands lightly on Harry’s shoulders. “Don’t think about the past. I have to scold unicorns out of thinking about the humans who hurt them, but you’re human, so we can talk in words. You have to think about other things.”  
  
“Like what?” Malfoy’s hands were distractingly warm. Harry shifted under them, wanting them off his shoulders, and felt William nudge his hand in disapproval.  
  
“Think about a time when you were completely relaxed.” Malfoy had somehow altered his voice to sound like the sea. Harry didn’t know how he’d done that, but when he stared at Malfoy, his eyes were calm and serious. He only nodded to Harry, and then said, “When was the last time you felt completely relaxed?”  
  
“When I slept here,” said Harry unwillingly.  
  
He thought that might make Malfoy laugh, but he only nodded again as if it didn’t surprise him, and murmured, “Then you should think about that. The way you felt when the spell or the sleep took hold of you. The way you felt when you opened your eyes and your muscles were still relaxed and warm.”  
  
“It’s hard to remember.”  
  
“I know. But I want you to try.”  
  
Harry sighed and closed his eyes. Immediately the memories were there, trying to overwhelm him. This time, it was memories of the time Ripper had chased him up a tree and Aunt Marge and the Dursleys had stood laughing beneath him. He shivered.  
  
“No,” Malfoy whispered insistently. “Don’t think of that. Remember what I told you to. Open your eyes and look at me.”  
  
Harry wrenched his eyes open. It was true that he would rather think of falling asleep in Malfoy’s and Snape’s care than the Dursleys, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was going to be at keeping his brain focused. “It’s hard.”  
  
“I know. But you keep going.”  
  
Malfoy didn’t sound impatient or frustrated, the way Harry had assumed he would be by now. So he focused on Malfoy and nodded slowly, letting himself seek out the little colors of grey and gold and blue in Malfoy’s eyes, where he would have thought that was silly just a short while ago.  
  
“Good,” Malfoy breathed. “Now, what’s the greatest source of stress you have?”  
  
“The memories. The feeling that no one can help me with them. Being alone.”  
  
“Those are all connected.” Malfoy’s hands eased up and down his shoulders and arms, and Harry relaxed with another sigh, bowing his head, which swayed back and forth. “If you’re not alone, then you don’t need to fear the other things, right? Because there will be someone who can help you face the memories.”  
  
“I suppose I never really thought about that before. I just thought no one would come and help me if Ron and Hermione were in Australia.”  
  
“You need to think about others,” Malfoy said, and his voice was a whisper. “Luna came and saved you. Brought you to us. I don’t think you could have gone much longer without us. But here you are. She’s your friend. Can you let us in? Think about us the same way?”  
  
Harry tilted his head back. Malfoy’s hands came with him and didn’t let him go. It was like—not the same, but like—the way Ron and Hermione would have caught him and insisted on him staying with them.  
  
It was probably stupid to trust someone because they touched you and whispered sweet things to you, but nevertheless, Harry spoke the words. “I think I can.”  
  
*  
  
Draco had to smile at the way that relaxation was creeping slowly over Potter, making him hold himself differently and breathe more gently and even catch Draco’s eye in a way that was less frantic than before. Draco had only tried these tactics with unicorns and not humans before, but they’d worked.  
  
And it was fascinating, how pliant Potter was under his hands now. When Severus reached out and tapped Draco on the shoulder, Draco almost didn’t want to let Potter go.  
  
“I trust Severus,” Draco did remember to say, when Severus took his place on the chair in front of Potter and he saw Potter starting to tense up again. “Do you think I can trust him because I do?”  
  
There was silence, as Potter struggled with what must have been his own instincts. Then he looked at Severus and resumed at least a little of his former breathing and slowness as he said, “I think so.”  
  
“Good,” said Severus, in the same kind of voice he used when he was getting ready to treat a unicorn with a potion, and he reached out and cupped his hand around Potter’s chin. He didn’t actually touch the man. Draco, watching every movement, nodded his approval of that tactic. Potter needed to be left with choice, or he _would_ clam up on them, freeze up, and every chance would be lost.  
  
“You can withdraw at any time,” said Severus. “I want to make that clear. You don’t have to let me into your mind if you don’t want to.”  
  
“How do I keep you out?”  
  
“You ask.” Severus, to Draco’s further approval, didn’t sound amused or contemptuous. “Tell me that you want me to withdraw from your mind. And I will do so.”  
  
There was a moment probably worth far more than Draco could estimate, when he could feel the delicate balance in the room tipping back and forth. He had no idea what sort of problems lay around Legilimency when it came to Severus and Potter, but obviously those problems were enormous.  
  
“Okay,” Potter finally whispered.   
  
“Good,” Severus said back, just as softly, and nodded to Draco. Draco stepped back so he wouldn’t be in between them but would be nearby to help in case either needed him.  
  
“ _Legilimens_ ,” said Severus, and his body stiffened a little as he went into the trance that characterized him being inside someone else’s head. Potter stiffened, too, but Draco doubted it was for any reason as comfortable.  
  
Draco stepped behind Potter and got ready to support him if he drooped or fell. He judged that his greater concern at the moment, rather than Severus needing him.  
  
*  
  
Potter’s memories were full of noise and whirling. Severus saw a dog rushing towards him, teeth bared and body low to the ground, and a young Potter scrambling towards a tree. There was already a bleeding wound on his calf.  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” Severus said, and the dog froze where it stood, as well as the laughing figures behind it, which were only human by common courtesy. The young Potter went on scrambling up the tree, but then seemed to realize the barking had stopped. He turned around and blinked down.  
  
“What did you do?” he asked, in a voice that resonated in odd ways. It was the voice of his adult counterpart, not a nine-year-old boy—as Severus judged him to be, taking a quick look at him and comparing it to his memories of an eleven-year-old Potter. Even then he had been small and scrawny.  
  
“You can fight these memories,” Severus said. “Freeze them. Hold them back. Replay them again. Their darkness has been strengthened with the magic that affected you on the destruction of the Horcrux. But they are still yours. You are stronger than they are, conscious in a way they are not.”  
  
The boy in the tree seemed to think about that. Then he dropped to the ground and walked over towards the frozen dog. Severus nodded in approval when he drew his foot back to kick the dog.  
  
But he quickly lowered it again. “It’s an animal,” said Potter. “I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t kick dogs.”  
  
Severus shrugged. “If I thought treating your memories this way would result in you abusing a real dog, I wouldn’t teach you this tactic. But I think that’s entirely unlikely. Isn’t it?” he added, when Potter only stared at him with those disconcerting child’s eyes instead of responding.  
  
“But it’s wrong.”  
  
“This is only a memory. Not the real dog. And what those excuses for guardians did to you was very wrong as well.”  
  
“Sometimes I think they were right, though. I mean, I never acted as quickly as I should have. I didn’t save Cedric. I didn’t go and get professors when I should have or ask the right questions. Those are things I wish I could change.”  
  
“That is part of the magic and force that strengthens your memories,” Severus said, and managed to sound as though he was describing something neutral, not responding to something that exasperated him. “Your guilt and worry. If you lie awake at night worrying about those things—”  
  
“I do. I mean, I have to. What happens if I have the same choices someday and I mess them up again? I have to think about them so I don’t.”  
  
Severus slowly bent down so he could look into the child’s eyes on the same level. “You would make choices that are good ones. And if you can trust more people, then you will have more people to advise you and reassure you.”  
  
Potter looked back at him, and his gaze was so steady. In the middle of even a momentary burst of safety, Severus thought, Potter gained his strength back.   
  
Severus had been thinking in terms of getting Potter to trust them so they could heal him, because it was an interesting case and something Lovegood wanted them to do. Now Severus thought Potter’s trust might also be interesting to have on its own terms.  
  
“That’s true,” said Potter abruptly. Again his voice startled Severus, so mature and thoughtful, at odds with the child he looked like. He faced the dog and the people again, and nodded once. “All right. Let the memory go.”  
  
“Why? We cannot talk to each other like this then, and there is the chance that you will lose control of it and it will wound you.”  
  
“I want to see if I can stop it on my own.” Potter gave him a tolerant glance. “Not much use if you have to come into my mind every time I want to control the memory, is it?”  
  
Severus hesitated, but what Potter said made good sense, even if part of him wanted to lodge an instinctive protest against it. He finally nodded and released his tight control on the dog.  
  
The dog instantly blurred into action again, but Potter glared at it, and it began to slow down. Sweat plopped from Potter’s forehead like tears. Severus thought he could see the faded scar—well, he knew it was faded in real life, and it looked the same here—coming back to life, red and aching, from Potter’s concentration.  
  
The dog had slowed, but hadn’t stopped completely. Its teeth were a few centimeters from Potter’s bleeding leg. Severus found himself straining forwards, mouth open to speak a word of caution, even though Potter knew perfectly well what that dog’s teeth could do. He’d lived through it.  
  
And it seemed he would live through it again. A gasp escaped Potter’s lips, and he froze the dog. Then he turned and made the faces of the people laughing at him soften and wash away. They became figures on a dark background, and then not even that, blending and blurring into each other.   
  
When they were little more than smudges of ink, and so was the dog, Potter sat down and rested his forehead on his knees. He was gasping and shaking in a way that made Severus put a hand on his shoulder before he thought about it.  
  
“I can—make it,” Potter said, and stood upright with a stubborn shake of his head. He looked at the place where the human figures had stood. “I can’t just change all my memories like that, though, can I? I don’t want to forget what really happened.”  
  
“This does not change your memory in the sense of making you forget,” Severus told him quietly. He was trying to remember the last time he had seen such a display of mental strength from someone who was not a trained Legilimens, and honestly could not recall it. “It reassures you that you survived the confrontation, and traps the memory so it can’t flood your mind like that again. Rather like setting up a dam to hold in water.”  
  
“I see.” Potter had climbed back to his feet, and he was growing as Severus watched, shedding the last child-like disguise of the memory. He glanced around and then turned to smile at Severus. “Thank you, sir. You’ve been helpful.”  
  
“You don’t need to call me that,” Severus told him before he thought about it. “I’m no longer your professor.”  
  
Potter glanced again at where Petunia and her husband, and what was presumably her sister-in-law, had stood.  
  
“That was something you did yourself. Not something you needed someone to _teach_ you, exactly.”  
  
Potter looked at him with a private smile. “Why don’t you let me decide what kinds of debts I want to owe?”   
  
Startled, Severus nodded. “Then I will,” he said. “Do you think you’ll be able to do that with other memories, once you face them?”  
  
Potter grimaced. “Not right away. Some of them are stronger, anyway, the way you saw with that basilisk memory. This is one of the milder ones, really.” Severus hid a shudder that anyone could describe the pull he’d felt as _mild_. “But eventually, yeah.” He nodded to Severus and said, “See you on the outside.” He began to fade, and by the time Severus blinked away the wavering vision that sights like that always seemed to leave him with, he was gone.  
  
Severus spiraled up and out of Potter’s mind, and found himself sitting up in his chair, catching Draco’s eyes across Potter’s head. Potter had slumped sideways in sleep, a much more natural sleep than he’d had so far. Draco raised an eyebrow.  
  
Severus nodded.  
  
Draco smiled and stroked Potter’s shoulder once. Then he walked over to Severus and offered him the best reward he could have had for his labor in Potter’s mind, a sweet kiss that quickly deepened.  
  
Severus didn’t know, later, what to make of the fact that he felt much the same satisfaction receiving the kiss from Draco and looking at Potter slumped asleep in his chair.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

“I can’t believe how far you’ve come in only a fortnight.”  
  
Harry snorted a little and wrapped his fingers around the cup of tea he’d brewed for himself before coming out here. Another new thing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cooked anything so complicated. “Admit it. You mean that you can’t believe I’m here and walking around on my own.”  
  
He sat on the edge of the little stone wall that surrounded the goat pen. Malfoy—well, Harry supposed he should acknowledge him as “Draco” now that he was on such good terms with him—still stood behind him, on the ground. Harry knew that wasn’t for the goats’ sake. Even if a few of them _were_ very good at getting out of their pen.  
  
“You almost weren’t.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “It was only a headache. Snape—I mean, Severus—says that lots of people get them after Legilimency of the kind he was using on me.” He drank the rest of the tea. He preferred a burned tongue to letting it get too cold.  
  
 _Another new thing._ He had preferences again, opinions that didn’t depend on how much trouble it was to get up from a certain specific position in bed.  
  
“It nearly killed you.”  
  
Harry stared at Draco, who was leaning his folded arms on the pen wall and still staring at Harry. “You didn’t mention _that_.”  
  
“Severus thought it would have discouraged you at the time. But you were magically and physically exhausted, and reordering your thoughts like that caused what Severus refers to as earthquakes in your mind.” Draco exhaled hard and looked away with a small frown. “I know you don’t remember, since you were asleep. But we were working hard to keep you alive.”  
  
“No,” Harry said a second later. “I didn’t know. So that’s another thing I owe you for.”  
  
He had discovered that he loved saying things like that, about the debts he owed them, if only because it made Severus scowl and Draco blush like he was a rose. “Stop talking about debts,” Draco said, and cleared his throat. “I mentioned it because you sounded like you were treating your own life casually again, not because I want you to feel you owe me something.”  
  
“I won’t be taking it casually again.” Harry leaned back and watched the small clouds overhead, thick enough to reduce the sunlight to water but still far brighter than his mood for the past month. “I don’t think I can.”  
  
For a moment or two, there was silence. Harry had started to turn towards Draco to figure out why _he_ didn’t start another conversation, at least, before he was surprised by the feel of a hand stealing into his.  
  
Harry gripped Draco’s hand and held on tight enough that he thought even Draco winced. But he didn’t let go, and they stood and sat there like that until the goats’ hungry bleating reminded them it was long past the time when Draco would normally have fed them.  
  
*  
  
Severus watched as Potter walked towards him and sat down in the chair on the far side of the lab. He did it the way Draco would have, quietly and without asking for attention. He simply waited there, and watched the bubbling cauldrons.   
  
Severus decided, after a moment, that it was safe to turn his back on him. Not that he thought Potter would literally stab him there, but there was a time when he wouldn’t have trusted Potter around potions for fear that he would make the potions explode by sheer force of his incompetence.  
  
Not now. Again it was easy to forget Potter was there, the way he would have with Draco, as Severus moved between the couple of cauldrons that needed his attention, flicking in small bits of leaf here, a stirring rod there, a touch of magic in the first to stabilize the ingredients that might have blown up otherwise, and a hand on the rim of the second to test how hot it was and whether it would need more additions soon. In both cases, he brought the draught to a successful conclusion and stepped back with a roll of his shoulders.  
  
Slight applause startled him, although he didn’t have anything in his hands that he could drop now. He turned to find Potter leaning forwards on his seat, smile warm and eyes moving slowly around as if he expected to find another potion Severus needed to tend to.  
  
“Why are you clapping?” Severus demanded.  
  
“I felt like I should.”  
  
Severus only blinked, having no real answer for that. Then he managed to ask, “Was there something urgent that brought you here?”  
  
“What can be urgent, here?” Potter asked, and instead of condemnation of the valley and the way Draco and Severus lived, it sounded like praise. He stood up and added, “I wanted to talk to you, but I thought it could wait.”  
  
Severus nodded slowly. Then he removed the heavy protective robes he’d been wearing against these potions splashing and said, “Let’s go outside.”  
  
Potter followed him without question. He was moving a new way, Severus thought, squinting back with one eye, or at least a way that was new in the last two weeks. He looked long-limbed and loose now, the way injured unicorn foals would walk as they regained their basic trust in the world. When he sank down on a stone near the house, which Severus chose in recognition of his limited strength, his eyes wandered in several directions before they returned to Severus.  
  
 _He’s_ seeing, _now_ , Severus thought, as he Transfigured a rough stump too low for sitting into a chair. _Not simply taking in._  
  
“I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done,” Potter said, and smiled at him. “Last night I wrestled the basilisk memory.”  
  
“You did _what?_ I told you to speak to me before—”  
  
“I know, but it came to the surface, and you were asleep,” Potter said simply. “I didn’t want to wake you up, so I fought it. And subdued it.”  
  
Severus eyed Potter, searching for the marks he thought would have been left by such a battle. In truth, the boy—young man—didn’t look bad. A bit of tiredness around the eyes, of tension in the hands he clenched on the edges of the stone. But it should have been far worse than that.  
  
“The next memory you wrestle shouldn’t be alone.”   
  
Severus considered he had spoken only common sense, and he was stunned by the ungraceful way Potter’s mouth fell open and he started to splutter. “ _What?_ But—I mean—I’ll be at home by then.” Now he was sitting up and projecting a much more familiar stubborn jaw, which didn’t appear to have been affected at all by his exertions last night. “You should _know_ that, sir. What am I supposed to do, call you through the fireplace and have you guide me through it after I’ve already woken up?”  
  
Severus studied him in silence for long seconds. He had discovered it was the most effective way to make Potter—Harry—squirm, and not something that required as much effort as the insults he would have used at Hogwarts.  
  
 _Insults towards Harry are simply too much effort, nowadays._  
  
“You did know that,” Harry added tightly, studying Severus all the while as if he thought he was playing a joke. “You did know that you were training me to be independent.”  
  
“Independent shouldn’t mean living on your own and having no one to care for you.”  
  
“Well, eventually Ron and Hermione will be back from Australia—”  
  
“You told me that even before they left, you were drifting apart from them. Helped, I think, by your excuses of ‘wanting to leave them some alone time’ and ‘everyone has to grow up sometime.’”  
  
Harry only went on staring at him, but now in a way that suggested he hadn’t expected Severus to remember those words. “Um, yes,” he conceded finally. “But that doesn’t mean—of course, I hope you’ll let me come and visit sometimes—”  
  
“You can stay here.”  
  
Harry looked at the house, so plaintively that Severus couldn’t help looking with him. But this wasn’t a part where Draco had carved one of those whimsical little faces that he took so much delight in putting everywhere. Only blank wall looked back. Severus considered Harry blandly far sooner than Harry gave up on the wood and turned to him.  
  
“Look,” Harry said tightly. “You can’t—”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Do I have to _remind_ you that the same objections would apply? To spending time with you and Draco that they do to spending time with Ron and Hermione, I mean. You’re a _couple._ Since I’ve been here, you haven’t had time alone.”  
  
Severus had to snort. “You are not very observant if you think that we haven’t managed to do exactly what we want when we want to.”  
  
Harry’s face turned the most fascinating shade of red at that. Severus laughed in a way that he hadn’t since one of the goats found its way into the lab and ended up covered in blue and purple spots that turned out to be permanent. “You’re _not_ very observant.”  
  
“Well, I mean, it’s nice that you got some private time.” Harry appeared to be wrestling with himself, not a memory. “Fine. But I still need to go home.”  
  
“Oh, yes, I agree. To put your affairs into order and retrieve any of the possessions that Luna didn’t see fit to bring with you when she moved you.”  
  
“But—how long do you think I’ll need to stay with you?”  
  
Severus paused. Perhaps he’d mistaken the source of Harry’s reluctance. “You don’t want to be here?”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. His face turned even redder. Severus waited, thoroughly mystified now. He could grasp the concept of a Harry who felt he was intruding and one who wanted to be by himself, but not this hybrid.  
  
“I would like to stay here,” Harry whispered. “I would—I like being with you, and I like William, and I’m learning a lot about memories and relaxing that I can’t learn on my own. But I don’t feel like I have a _place_ here. You and Draco are still—alone together.”  
  
 _I thought your main objection was that we would not be alone together._ But Severus was wiser now than to say such things. In truth, he had been for some time.  
  
And there had been something he had noticed and discussed with Draco in the past few days. Draco had responded in a way that told Severus he had much the same thoughts. It was a fault of Draco’s that he would never have been the first one to bring it up, though.  
  
 _Still so delicate around me, after all these years._ Severus put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry jumped, shocked out of his own mumbling recital to himself. Severus nodded to reassure him and spoke.  
  
“Draco and I would like you to stay,” he told Harry. “You fit in—comfortably. You need guidance, and we don’t want to see our work put into healing you wasted.” Harry’s face changed subtly, and Severus saw he would have to move faster than he’d believed. It seemed Harry didn’t have all that much delicacy to respect after all. “But we also enjoy your company. So does William, which is a better recommendation than you know. And there is something else. Something I thought of, something Draco thought of, but something which you may not have thought of.”  
  
From the look on Harry’s face, he hadn’t. “What do you mean?”  
  
Severus thought of the best way to phrase it. “We have a balance here. Routines, yes, but more than that. We are more open than we used to be. I do not think you could have envisioned me accepting you and wishing to help you heal like this before. And I do not think you could have opened your mind to Draco and me unless you knew, on some level, that we had changed.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “Of course not. And the people you used to be wouldn’t have wanted to help me, anyway.”  
  
Severus did not flinch, because it was true. “But there are—different kinds of balance. Draco and I have achieved one by living here, taking care of animals that Luna brings us, brewing potions, staying distant from annoyances such as the delivery of the _Prophet_. That does not mean it is the only kind of balance we could ever achieve.”  
  
“So you wouldn’t mind if I stayed here?”  
  
Severus took a moment to watch Harry, tracing the lines of strength that his life had carved into his face. Yes, there were lines of pain and worry there, too. But Severus thought both they and Harry had spent too much time thinking about them. Harry was turned towards him, lightly perched in his chair, fingers tapping like the restless wings of a grasshopper.  
  
“Not at all,” said Severus. “And there might be other ways the balances among us could change. Two legs are strong. So are three.”  
  
Harry was still frowning, so baffled that Severus felt compelled to reach up and touch his face. Then Harry made a noise, but it was strangled, and he grabbed Severus’s hand and forced it down.  
  
“What does _Draco_ think of this?”  
  
Severus felt a quelling look was called for then. “Do you imagine I would even have considered such a thing without consulting him?”  
  
“Oh.” Harry stared at Severus’s hand, and then around, as if looking for interruptions from a goat or William.  
  
Severus reached the rest of the way, giving Harry plenty of opportunities to evade him if that was what he wanted. But Harry held still, although his eyes were huge, and Severus gave his face a single quick stroke from the faded scar on his forehead down to his chin.  
  
“Now,” Severus said, and stood slowly. His legs had cramped, and the scars on his throat ached. Before he could explain where he wanted to go, though, or why, Harry had already moved to his side, offering automatic support. Severus blinked and then gave a thin smile that he didn’t think Harry appreciated the import of.  
  
Harry didn’t know the extent of Severus’s injuries from the encounter with Nagini. He had watched Draco handle Severus gently in the past few days, though, and had evidently picked something up from that. He maneuvered Severus, or rather helped him maneuver, over some stones and roots and down the slope of the hill to the shade of a tree where Draco was examining an injured pig that he’d found “somewhere.”  
  
Severus suspected “somewhere” involved Muggle farms that didn’t properly care for their animals. As long as Draco didn’t get caught—and considering he brought Severus some fascinating ingredients form those farms—Severus supposed he couldn’t complain.   
  
“Are you all right, Severus?” Draco asked the question without looking up from the pig, and made Severus relax for a long moment before he could figure out _why_. Draco would have looked up around most people, his eyes not necessarily hard but tracking. Most of the time, Luna was the only one he would have accepted this way, as though her presence was natural and the pig more important.  
  
For him to accept Harry…  
  
“I am well,” said Severus, although he was glad to lean against the tree. “And Harry has questions for you.”  
  
Draco smiled and nodded without looking away from the pig, which currently had a deep incision in its side. It squealed and kicked twice with its trotters, but calmed as Draco laid a hand on its shoulder. “Give me a few moments, and I’ll answer them properly.”  
  
Harry seemingly had no objection to that. He leaned against the tree beside Severus, and watched Draco heal the pig with a vivid interest that made Severus idly wonder whether he had ever considered healing as a career.  
  
 _Perhaps we can discuss that, too._  
  
But it could wait. That Harry had agreed there were other things to discuss was already a brighter beginning than Severus had dared to envision.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned back on his heels and shook his head. Someone had shot at the pig with a Muggle gun, and Draco had had to extract the bullet, calm the pig’s fear, and heal the initial damage as well as the damage he’d made cutting in to get the bullet out. It had taken him nearly an hour, but the pig was asleep now, and she would have a slow but successful recovery process.  
  
When he looked up, it was with quiet enjoyment and satisfaction, and meeting Harry’s eyes didn’t change that.  
  
“Severus told you that we’d like you to stay here?” he asked, and stood to wring the sweat out of his shirt. Before he could finish it, Harry’s wand moved in a swift movement, and the shirt was dry, as was his skin beneath it. Draco smiled and sat down on the other side of the pig, closer to Harry and Severus, although close enough to reach her if she needed him.  
  
“Yes. But—as a friend or—guest or—”  
  
Words were sticking in Harry’s throat. Not a surprise, Draco thought. Harry was both oblivious of the private time he and Severus had snatched and utterly unsuspicious that they might want to spend more time with him, let alone that they might want something more even than that.  
  
“As someone who could be those things at first, and then become something more,” Draco said. “Maybe. You don’t have to if your path doesn’t lead in that direction.”  
  
“I thought you were going to say—if I didn’t want to.”  
  
“I reckoned _that_ was obvious. But right now, I don’t think you know what you want.” Draco stood up and moved in to feather his fingers through Harry’s hair. Harry looked startled for only a second before he dipped his head in acceptance. “It would be better if you had some time to think about it first.”  
  
Harry blinked and nodded. His eyes and breathing were steady again, and he focused on Draco with the kind of brilliant intensity that had sometimes made Draco breathless when they played Quidditch opposite each other. Well, now it could make him breathless for a different reason, Draco thought.  
  
And from the way Severus was watching them, it might do the same thing to him.  
  
They’d talked about this, with and without words, healing unicorns and brewing together and making love and sitting together in the evenings after Harry had gone to bed. They’d _both_ been intimately involved in getting Harry to this point. And they’d both had connections to Harry from the past that were impossible to ignore.  
  
They would never abandon each other for the sake of dating Harry Potter. On the other hand, if Harry wanted to join _them_ …they would like that.  
  
“I do need some time to think about it,” said Harry, who had apparently decided to talk with words again. “Is that all right?”  
  
“Of course,” said Severus, and Draco was glad he had been the one to say this. Harry needed to know how much both of them were waiting to surround and cradle him, should he accept it. “We just said that.”  
  
Harry turned with his eyes snapping. “Considering how much trouble we got into by not saying things in the past, I thought I should.”  
  
“ _I_ cannot remember that I ever caused trouble by holding my tongue. Perhaps someone else should have, more often.”  
  
Draco leaned back with a smile as he listened to Severus bait Harry, and Harry rise to it like a leaping dolphin. And there was a similar grace in the way Severus’s neck turned, as if he had forgotten the scars there, and the way Harry glanced at Draco, inviting him into the conversation.  
  
Draco fully intended to enter it. But he would choose the right place, to fire the right insult.  
  
Or the right comment. Or the right compliment. The right message.  
  
 _We’re a long way from having things settled. But we’re exactly where I want to be._  
  
 **The End.**  
  



End file.
